A pregnant woman allegedly abducted a 17-year-old girl so her husband could have sex with her, and then helped him kill the girl to cover up their crime, according to police [zh] in China's northeastern Heilongjiang province on July 25, 2013.

On the afternoon of July 24, Hu Yixuan, a 17-year-old student nurse, passed by the Forestry Compound in Jiamusi on her way to a schoolmate's house when she spotted a pregnant woman squatting on the ground. The pot-bellied lady, clearly in pain, asked Hu to help her upstairs to her home.

“Helping a mother-to-be home. Just arrived.” Sent at 15:18, the text message she sent to a friend from Wechat, a mobile text and voice messaging service, turned out to be a farewell message.

According to Dbw.cn [zh], the biggest local news portal in Heilongjiang, Mrs Tan allegedly led the girl inside and gave her a bottle of yoghurt to which she added some sleeping pills. A source told the website that the couple later allegedly tried to rape the girl but failed when they found out that she was menstruating. According to the website, although the woman wanted to let her go, her husband refused and allegedly suffocated Hu with a pillow.

The couple was then allegedly seen carrying the case that held Hu's body into a car and drove away. The police received a call from the victim's family on July 26 and the couple was arrested two days later. The woman, eight-months pregnant, was put into a hospital.

Picture of the victim Hu Yixuan, from Sina Weibo.

The woman's motive was highly disputed. A local policeman told the state media Global Times that the suspects confessed to the abduction as an attempt to make up to the husband for his suspicions that the wife was cheating on him.

Dbw's source, however, seemed to differ. “That's not true. She's pregnant, and as they can't have sex, she wanted to find a girl for a man (to have sex with). She's been having that idea for a long time.”

The couple's brutality triggered not only outrage among Chinese users of popular microblogging website Sina Weibo, but also discussion about self-defense.

A pregnant woman finds an outlet for her husband's sexual desire in a girl that tried to help her, before killing her brutally. I cannot imagine this is done by human beings. Sartre said “hell is other people”, but here hell can be anyone, and it may even be kindness that leads you on the way to it. Such a shame that the woman is pregnant and can't be sentenced to death.

This is exactly why I recommend girls watch Criminal Minds. It improves your safety consciousness by so many levels. For example, when you see lost children, or people with their injured pets, or painful pregnant women, the right way to respond is call the police, contact their family, wait at an area with enough crowds and send them to a hospital – not to a place they ask you to. Bear that in mind.